I call it Mendocino Energy and am not attached to the name, yet very passionate about this important safe, renewable energy development concept. Time has come for us to get rolling!

Mendocino Energy ~ At this core energy technology incubator, energy policy is created as renewable energy technologies and science move swiftly from white boards and white papers to testing, refinement and implementation.

The Vision

Mendocino Energy is located on the Mendocino coast, three plus hours north of San Francisco, Silicon Valley. On the waterfront of Fort Bragg, utilizing a portion of the now-defunct Georgia-Pacific Mill Site to innovate in best practices, cost-efficient, safe renewable and sustainable energy development – wind, wave, solar, bioremediation, green-ag/algae, smart grid and grid technologies, et al.

Start-ups, utility companies, universities (e.g. Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford), EPRI, the federal government (FERC, DOE, DOI) and the world’s greatest minds gathering at this fast-tracked, unique coming-together of a green work force and the U.S. government, creating responsible, safe renewable energy technologies to quickly identify best commercialization candidates and build-outs.

The campus is quickly constructed on healthy areas of the Mill Site as in the past, this waterfront, 400+ acre industry created contaminated areas where mushroom bioremediation is underway.

Determining best sitings for projects in solar thermal, wind turbines and mills, algae farming, bioremediation; taking the important first steps towards establishing U.S. leadership in renewable energy and the global green economy.

“I hope this is the first of many more large-scale solar projects we will permit,” said Jeffrey D. Byron, a member of the California Energy Commission, at a hearing in Sacramento on Wednesday. “This is exactly the type of project we want to see.”

Developers and regulators have been racing to license solar power plants and begin construction before the end of the year, when federal incentives for such renewable energy projects expire. California’s three investor-owned utilities also face a deadline to obtain 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by the end of 2010.

Still, it has been long slog as solar power plants planned for the Mojave Desert have become bogged down in disputes over their impact on protected wildlife and scarce water supplies.

In March 2008, NextEra Energy Resources filed an application to build the Beacon project on 2,012 acres of former farmland in Kern County. Long rows of mirrored parabolic troughs will focus sunlight on liquid-filled tubes to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.

Some rural residents immediately objected to the 521 million gallons of groundwater the project would consume annually in an arid region on the western edge of the Mojave Desert. After contentious negotiations with regulators, NextEra agreed to use recycled water that will be piped in from a neighboring community.

“It’s been a lengthy process, an almost embarrassingly long lengthy process,” said Scott Busa, NextEra’s Beacon project manager, at Wednesday’s hearing. “Hopefully, we’re going from a lengthy process to a timely process.”

“Despite all the hard work that has been done, this project won’t get built anytime soon,” said Tanya Gulesserian, representing California Unions for Reliable Energy. She cited the absence of a deal to sell electricity from the Beacon power plant to a utility.

Mr. Busa responded that NextEra was in the final stages of negotiating a power purchase agreement.

The view to the west from Ocean Beach could one day be cluttered with scores of spinning windmills, generating power.

San Francisco under Mayor Gavin Newsom has long explored the possibility of tapping alternative energy sources, including tidal, wave, solar, geothermal and wind power.

San Francisco is reviewing the environmental impacts of a planned project that would place underwater devices off Ocean Beach to harness wave power, which is a nascent form of renewable energy. The review and its approvals are expected to wrap up within a year.

City leaders are starting to think that construction of the wave power project could help them assess the viability of a more visually striking proposal: a wind farm.

Ocean Beach was found by UC Berkeley professor Ronald Yeung to have good potential for a powerful wave energy farm. Waves that roll into the beach are created by Arctic tempests.

The finding was confirmed last year by city contractors, who determined a facility could provide up to 30 megawatts of electricity — enough power for 30,000 homes.

Environmental review work under way involves studying sediment movement and tracking whale migration patterns to determine the best places on the sea floor to attach futuristic wave power devices.

Recent changes in federal regulations could limit San Francisco to working within three miles of the shoreline because offshore renewable energy projects now require expensive leases instead of less-expensive permits, although the process is clouded by uncertainty.

The federal Mineral Management Services agency has responsibility for regulating offshore renewable energy resources, including wave and power farms, but the agency is being overhauled in the wake of the Gulf oil spill disaster.

The recent regulatory changes could see offshore energy rights snapped up by deep-pocketed oil or utility companies under anticipated bidding processes.

On San Francisco’s clearest days, visitors to Ocean Beach can sometimes see the Farallon Islands, which are 27 miles west of San Francisco — nearly 10 times further out to sea than the three-mile offshore border.

After safe and potentially powerful locations have been identified, wave energy technology will be selected from a growing suite of options including devices that float near the surface, those that hover in midwater and undulating seabed equipment inspired by kelp.

The next step would involve applying for permits and installing the equipment.

Somewhere along the way, costs will be determined and funds will need to be raised by officials or set aside by lawmakers.

Once the wave-catching equipment is in place, it could be used to help determine wind velocities and other factors that make the difference between viable and unviable wind farm sites.

“What we really need to do is put some wind anemometers out there,” Newsom’s sustainability adviser Johanna Partin said. “There are a couple of buoys off the coast with wind meters on them, but they are spread out and few and far between. As we move forward with our wave plans, we’re hoping there are ways to tie in some wind testing. If we’re putting stuff out there anyway then maybe we can tack on wind anemometers.”

Partin characterized plans for a wind farm off Ocean Beach as highly speculative but realistic.

Wind power facilities are growing in numbers in California and around the world.

But wind farms are often opposed by communities because of fears about noise, vibrations, ugliness and strobe-light effects that can be caused when blades spin and reflect rays from the sun.

A controversial and heavily opposed 130-turbine project that could produce 468 megawatts of power in Nantucket Sound received federal approvals in May.

West Coast facilities, however, are expected to be more expensive and complicated to construct.

“The challenge for us on the West Coast is that the water is so much deeper than it is on the East Coast,” Partin said.

Treasure Island is planned site for turbine test

A low-lying island in the middle of the windswept Bay will be used as a wind-power testing ground.

The former Navy base Treasure Island is about to be used in an international project to test cutting-edge wind turbines. It was transferred last week to to San Francisco to be developed by private companies in a $100 million-plus deal.

The testing grounds, planned in a southwest pocket of the island, could be visible from the Ferry Building.

The first turbines to be tested are known as “vertical axis” turbines, meaning they lack old-fashioned windmill blades, which can be noisy and deadly for birds.

The devices to be tested were developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in cooperation with Russian companies. Five were manufactured in Russia and delivered to California earlier this year.

The wind-technology relationship, which was funded with $2 million in federal funds, grew out of an anti-nuclear-proliferation program started in 1993.

“The vertical machines should be good in gusty low-wind conditions, which are those which you expect in an urban environment,” lead LBNL researcher Glen Dahlbacka said recently.

The machines were designed to minimize noise and are easily built.

“They’re relatively easy to work up in a fiberglass shop,” Dahlbacka said.

Eventually, each device could be coupled with solar panels to provide enough power for a modest home, Dahlbacka said.

The team is not expected to be the only group to test wind turbines on the island.

San Francisco plans to provide space for green-tech and clean-tech companies to test their wind-power devices on the island to help achieve product certification under federal standards adopted in January.

The program could help San Francisco attract environmental technology companies.

“It’s an opportunity to attract and retain clean-tech companies,” Department of the Environment official Danielle Murray said. “We’ve just started putting feelers out to the industry.”

The proposed testing grounds might have to shift around as the island is developed with thousands of homes and other buildings in the coming years.

“We need to work with them with regards to where these things go and how they would interact with the development project,” Wilson Meany Sullivan developer Kheay Loke said.

The Technology Strategy Board funding follows the support given earlier this month to AWS Ocean Energy by the Scottish Government’s WATERS programme (Wave and Tidal Energy: Research, Development and Demonstration Support).

“Our trials on Loch Ness will restart in September for a 6 week period and thereafter a detailed assessment of the trial results will be undertaken before we start building and then deploy a full-scale version of one of the wave absorption cells.”

A single utility-scale AWS-III, measuring around 60 m in diameter, will be capable of generating up to 2.5 MW of continuous power.

AWS Ocean Energy says it is seeking industrial and utility partners to enable the launching of a 12-cell, 2.5 MW pre-commercial demonstrator in 2012 and subsequent commercialisation of the technology.

Aquamarine Power and AWS Ocean Energy today secured approximately £4.39m to continue development of their wave energy devices.

The WATERS fund (Wave and Tidal Energy: Research, Development and Demonstration Support) has provided Aquamarine Power with more than £3m to develop its 2.4MW Oyster demonstration project in Scotland while AWS Ocean Energy received £1.39m to develop its AWS-III surface-floating wave power device.

Phased installation of the Oyster 2 project will begin at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney in Summer 2011. In-depth coverage of Oyster from The Engineer’s 2009 Awards Supplement can be read here.

The Oyster demonstration project will consist of three 800kW hinged flaps, each measuring 26m by 16m. The flaps are moved by the motion of near shore waves, which in turn drive two hydraulic pistons that push high-pressure water onshore to drive a conventional hydro-electric turbine.

Oyster 2 Wave Energy Converter

Aquamarine Power claims each flap will deliver 250 per cent more power than the original Oyster prototype, which was successfully deployed at EMEC in 2009.

The three devices will be linked to a single onshore 2.4MW hydro-electric turbine. The new devices incorporate modifications that are expected to facilitate the production of more energy, be simpler to install and easier to maintain.

AWS Ocean Energy will use its funding to further develop the AWS-III device, a ring-shaped, multi-cell, surface-floating wave power system.

It is claimed that a single utility-scale AWS-III, measuring around 60m in diameter, will be capable of generating up to 2.5MW of continuous power.

Scale testing of the AWS-III on Loch Ness is currently being carried out to provide design data and confirm the AWS-III’s commercial potential.

The £15m WATERS scheme, which is run and administered by Scottish Enterprise, has been designed to support the construction and installation of pre-commercial full-scale wave and tidal stream device prototypes in Scottish waters.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) today proposed to build on its Order No. 890 open access transmission reforms by establishing a closer link between regional electric transmission planning and cost allocation to help ensure that needed transmission facilities actually are built.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) is based on an extensive record: three years of monitoring implementation of Order No. 890, three regional technical conferences and examination of more than 150 sets of comments filed in response to an October 2009 request for comment on transmission planning and cost allocation. It proposes and seeks comment on requiring:

Transmission providers to establish a closer link between cost allocation and regional transmission planning by identifying and establishing cost allocation methods for beneficiaries of new transmission facilities;

Transmission planning to take into account needs driven by public policy requirements established by state or federal laws or regulations;

Neighboring transmission planning regions to improve their coordination with respect to facilities that are proposed to be constructed in two adjacent regions and could address transmission needs more efficiently than separate intraregional facilities; and

The removal from Commission-approved tariffs or agreements provisions that provide an undue advantage to an incumbent developer so that sponsors of transmission projects have the right, consistent with state or local laws or regulations, to build and own facilities selected for inclusion in regional transmission plans.

“Our nation needs a transmission grid that can accommodate rising consumer demand for a more diverse mix of power generators and the sophisticated technology of the smart grid,” FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff said. “To do that, we must make sure FERC transmission policies are open and fair to all.”

A significant aspect of the proposal is the requirement that transmission planning take into account public policy requirements, such as state-mandated renewable portfolio standards. Doing so during the transmission planning process will help ensure these legal requirements are met in a way that is fair and efficient to transmission customers.

The proposal also ties cost allocation to the regional transmission planning processes to facilitate the transition from planning to implementation. This ensures that only those consumers benefiting from transmission facilities are charged for associated costs, and gives each region the first opportunity to develop cost allocation mechanisms and identify how the benefits of transmission facilities will be determined. Comments are due 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) told the Southern California partnership planning to develop wave energy off Mendocino that the firm’s permit will probably be canceled

Kenneth Hogan of FERC wrote that GreenWave Energy Solutions had failed to file both a required notice of intent and a pre-application document (PAD), in a letter sent Monday.

Both documents were due in early May for GreenWave’s two proposed wave energy farms off San Luis Obispo and Mendocino. Both documents are intended to determine the scale of the projects now being considered and the “probable revocation” applies to both projects.

Earlier this year, GreenWave announced they had entered into an agreement with Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) of New Jersey, one of the world’s top companies in the field to get the two projects going.

GreenWave has so far pushed the biggest wave energy project idea of all, one that would generate a whopping 100 megawatts of power off Mendocino.

GreenWave was granted a preliminary permit in May 2009, after FERC had sent the permit back for more details and deliberated for nearly a year. A preliminary permit is an exclusive right to study an area of the ocean.

At the end of a successful preliminary permit process, that developer gets first right to install wave energy devices, by virtue of being the first to file for the preliminary permit.

The area now claimed by GreenWave had previously been claimed by Chevron.

But GreenWave is now told they will probably lose their claim to that area.

“The failure to timely file a [Notice of Intent] and PAD warrants the cancellation of a preliminary permit,” Hogan wrote. “This letter constitutes notice under section 5 of the Federal Power Act of the probable cancellation of both preliminary permits no less than 30 days from the date of this letter.”

The cancellation would be bad news for Tony Strickland, a Southern California Republican who made his work as one of the four GreenWave Partners a key plank in the campaign with which won his state Senate seat by the narrowest of margins two years ago. He lists “alternative energy executive” as his occupation.

Now, Strickland is using his status as a green energy businessman in his campaign to be state controller. He won the Republican nomination last month by a wide margin.

“Tony serves as Vice President of GreenWave Energy Solutions LLC, a company that seeks to harness the power of ocean waves to provide energy to Californians,” his campaign website states.

GreenWave has never held a single local meeting to introduce or explain its claim of the waters off Mendocino village. Some locals are amazed at how much Strickland makes of a project that exists only on paper.

“GreenWave Energy Solutions was the recipient of the United Chamber of Commerce Small Business Award for 2008 and Tony has been featured on CNBC for his work with the company,” the Controller 2010 campaign website states.

On the other hand, the permit termination would be good news for the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative. According to a California Attorney General opinion, the MLPAI is banned from putting any new marine parks (of any of the three kinds) in areas where there are pre-existing ocean leases, which includes the GreenWave lease off Mendocino and the PG&E lease off Eureka. Thus, a big area of ocean real estate is currently off limits to creation of new protected areas by the MLPAI.

Earlier this year, GreenWave promised FERC several rounds of local meetings for March and April, which failed to materialize. And the company has filed other documents late during its FERC process.

But FERC’s revocation threats may be premature. A review of the FERC lease documents shows GreenWave may have a valid reason why they didn’t file the documents that resulted in this week’s letter from Hogan.

The FERC lease gives GreenWave the option of filing a Notice of Intent and Draft License in two years, instead of the one-year filing requirement for the NOI and PAD. However, to further complicate matters, GreenWave actually promised the NOI and PAD would be done in June 2010. That promise was made in GreenWave’s 45-day filing in June 2009.

GreenWave Energy Solutions is described as a limited liability company with five members, President Wayne Burkamp, Strickland, engineer Bill Bustamante and prominent Southern California housing developers Dean Kunicki and Gary Gorian.

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